Core Team

Rohit Kumar – Co-founder

Alumnus of Harvard Kennedy School of Government and IIT Bombay, Rohit served as the Head of Policy and Research at the office of Mr. Baijayant ‘Jay’ Panda, Member of Parliament (Lok Sabha). In addition to supervising research at Mr. Panda’s office, Rohit was responsible for working with central/state governments and non-governmental organizations on development projects.Read complete profile

He has worked for several years with PRS Legislative Research, the Indian think-tank that supports MPs across party lines with research on legislative and policy issues. At PRS, Rohit also developed ‘MP Track’, a tool that is widely used by the media and civil society to track engagement of MPs in Parliament. Before shifting to policy, he was a strategy consultant with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) at their Mumbai office. He is a 2013 IPRYLI (India-Pakistan Regional Young Leaders Initiative) fellow with the Asia Society.

Aparajita Bharti – Co-founder

With a Master of Public Policy (MPP) from Oxford University, Aparajita has rich experience in policy and communications. In her previous role, she was Manager, Corporate Affairs and Communications at Snapdeal where she was responsible for media messaging and engagement, in addition to providing inputs on policy and legislative issues that affect the digital commerce sector.Read complete profile

She has worked as a Legislative Assistant to Mr. N.K. Singh, Member of Parliament (Rajya Sabha) and was one of the four Indians selected for the Faiths Act Fellowship by the Tony Blair Faith Foundation in 2011. In her undergraduate years at the College of Business Studies, Delhi University, Aparajita was instrumental in starting ‘Manthan’ – an annual congregation of street theatre societies to spread social awareness across India. Manthan has now expanded to 15+ towns and cities. She is a World Economic Forum Global Shaper from the New Delhi hub.

Sukhmani Grover – Engagement Manager

Sukhmani is a development strategist and practitioner with extensive experience at the intersection of policy, grassroots mobilisation and active citizenship. She is a graduate from the College of Business Studies, University of Delhi and holds an MA in Sociology. Previously, as part of the leadership team at Haiyya, she expanded the organization’s reach at the grassroots level and gave strategic direction to its youth led community projects and campaigns.Read complete profile

Haiyya’s goal was to equip leaders with the skills necessary to build collective power in local communities to demand accountable and responsive governance on issues such as sanitation, environment, health and gender etc. Sukhmani has also worked with the Tony Blair Faith Foundation on experiential learning and with UNICEF for building a citizen’s charter. She learnt community organizing from the Harvard Kennedy School under the mentorship of Prof. Marshall Ganz.

Sneha Pillai – Communications & Advocacy Lead

Sneha is a communications specialist with a strong background in outreach and knowledge management in the social sector. A Commonwealth Scholar (2018-19) with an MSc in Media, Communication and Development from the London School of Economics, she has previously worked with UN agencies and the forest departments of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.Read complete profile

She played an active role in managing the communications for two UNDP projects funded by the Global Environment Facility, and with the International Growth Centre in London, where she supported the programme coordination of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation funded India programme. With a Bachelor’s in Mass Media from University of Mumbai and Post Graduate Diploma in Journalism from the Asian College of Journalism, Sneha started her career as a journalist before moving on to the development sector.

Abhilasha Gupta – Senior Officer, Programs & Communications

Abhilasha is an alumna of IIM Indore and Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology and has studied at EM Normandie, France. She has diverse experience across domains, including program management, marketing and data analytics, working with organizations such as KPMG, American Express and Parle Products. She is passionate about people development, and that prompted her to shift gears to explore the space of experiential learning.Read complete profile

She did a stint in teaching and worked with an education-based NGO, before moving to a company that provided behavioural skills and leadership training to professionals, where she took charge of curating effective learning experiences. She continues managing marketing communications and content creation for the NGO Guzarish that works to increase access to books for those in need.

Abhinav Saikia – Senior Analyst, Public Policy

Abhinav is an alumnus of BITS-Pilani. Prior to YLAC, he was as an Intellectual Property (IP) Consultant at Hourglass Research where he advised clients in India and abroad on matters relating to IP value creation, licensing and IP rights enforcement policies. During his stint at Hourglass, he worked part-time as a Resident Policy Analyst with NextElection, a community-driven town hall platform for politicians, journalists and citizens.Read complete profile

At NextElection he worked on various crucial subjects, such as Minimum Support Price for farmers, regulatory framework for application-based cab aggregators, and pollution in India. Abhinav has also briefly worked with Maadhyam where he analyzed patterns of minority participation in education and employment in India for the purpose of undertaking public consultations on the issue.

Ameya Kamath – Senior Officer, Programs & Communications

Ameya is an education policy and development professional with a Master’s in International Education Policy from Harvard University and a Bachelor’s in Economics from University College London. Although he started his career in Finance and Consulting, a teaching stint at Oxford triggered his passion for education-related programming and policy making.Read complete profile

Since then he has consulted for Teach for India, Teach for Mexico and UNICEF Romania on both short and long-term projects. Most recently, Ameya worked at UNESCO Bangkok where he focused on ICT in Education projects and ‘Digital Citizenship’ at scale across the Asia-Pacific region.

Deepro Guha – Senior Analyst, Public Policy

A lawyer by training, Deepro graduated from NUJS, Kolkata in 2013. Previously, he has worked with the law firm Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas. During his tenure at the firm, he was involved in a wide array of cases including criminal matters, arbitration matters and constitutional issues. He then did a stint at PLR Chambers wherein he helped frame the Draft West Bengal Agriculture and Food Processing Policy.Read complete profile

His interest in public policy led him to sit for the UPSC Civil Services Examination. While he managed to secure a rank of 395, he did not pursue the allocated service. Deepro is passionate about strengthening governance systems and improving policy design and implementation for effective service delivery. He is also a keen violinist and enthusiastic sportsman, and has played in the Bengal Hockey Association League 3rd Division.

Riddhi Vartak – Officer, Partnerships & Outreach

Riddhi is a governance and political affairs professional, with a Master’s (Honours) in Public Policy from the University of Mumbai, an LLB from Government Law College, Mumbai and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from Sophia College. Previously, she worked for Praja Foundation where she led the citizen engagement vertical and managed projects for the European Union’s grant to the organization.Read complete profile

During her work with the Aam Aadmi Party’s Maharashtra unit, she managed communications, strategy and research for the core team and shadowed the party’s Maharashtra President who was also an ex-Member of Parliament. She has briefly worked on projects with the Government of Maharashtra, specifically the Tribal Affairs and the Women and Child Development departments, on two flagship schemes of the Chief Minister to curb malnutrition in Maharashtra’s tribal districts.

Srikanth Ravishanker – Officer, Programs & Communications

Srikanth holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from the National Law School of India University, Bangalore, before which he pursued his Bachelor’s in Mass Media from the University of Mumbai. He has worked in the office of Independent Gujarat MLA, Jignesh Mevani where he helped Mr. Mevani with assembly speeches, media management, advocacy and constituency management.Read complete profile

Srikanth also worked on Kanhaiya Kumar’s 2019 Lok Sabha election campaign from Begusarai, where he assisted in social media amplification and voter canvasing. He spent four years working in the editorial team of ESPNcricinfo.com, where he wrote, edited and published different types of news and feature articles for the website. He has also worked in the development sector with Mumbai-based Apni Shala Foundation, a non-profit that focuses on social-emotional learning skills for children in Municipal Schools; at Apni Shala Foundation, Srikanth handled the Fundraising and Communications verticals.

Tanvi Vartak – Officer, Programs & Communications

Tanvi is an alumna of Symbiosis School for Liberal Arts, Pune. She is a graduate in International Relations and Law with a thesis on Gender Rights and Marital Rape as the highlight of her curriculum. Her core interests in policy and communication led her to pursue courses in negotiation at the London School of Economics. She has also worked in the development sector, actively volunteering as a teacher.Read complete profile

In 2018, she worked on the ‘Need to Foster Socio-Emotional Learning in the National School Curriculum’ as a Policy in Action Fellow with YLAC. The goals of YLAC coincide with Tanvi’s interest in art, policy and experiential learning, deeming it the ideal workplace for her. She is also an artist and engages in finger painting during her free time.

Anubhav Khanna – Associate, Public Policy

Anubhav is an alumnus of SRCC, University of Delhi. After completing his Bachelors in Economics, he joined the Press Relations Department in the Ministry of Finance as a research analyst from PwC. While at the Ministry, he also worked on big data assignments in the Department of Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM), where he was responsible for analyzing trends in GST Return Filing.Read complete profile

The primary focus of these assignments was to understand how the existing data can be leveraged to identify risky exporters to curb the incidence of fraud. Anubhav has a strong interest in research. He is a fellow of the YLAC Policy in Action Program of 2019.

Chinmay Rayarikar – Associate, Public Policy

Chinmay has been involved in many years of research on urban development and the built environment, with a focus on urban issues in India, China, Tanzania and Rwanda. He finished his undergraduate studies at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, USA and studied development studies for graduate school at the Oxford Department of International Development at the University of Oxford.Read complete profile

Some of his academic work includes research on gentrification in Indian cities, authoritarian governance in contemporary Rwanda, as well as public spaces in urban China. He also has a strong interest in technology and aviation, and has worked in the tech sector in the UK before.

Vanya Gupta – Associate, Public Policy

Vanya is a public policy and development professional with a Master’s in Development Studies from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and Psychology from Mumbai University. She started her career as an Analyst in the Public Sector and Governance team at PwC, where she conducted research on multiple subjects in the development sector for consulting assignments.Read complete profile

She has also worked at the grassroots level to evaluate policy implementation in villages and districts. Most recently, she worked as a research assistant at IDS on the applications of blockchain technology for social impact.

Deepti Juneja – Admin Manager

Deepti holds a Master’s degree in Arts and a Bachelor’s degree in Education. Prior to joining YLAC, Deepti worked with FHI 360 as a documentation consultant in their Urban Health Initiative project based in Mathura. She has also worked as a teacher at the Delhi Public School, Aligarh.Read complete profile

At YLAC, her focus areas include establishing and maintaining finance and administrative systems. She also looks after logistics for program implementation.

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